The Internet is Gigantimous and Awesome News

Remember the old days in school when you’d get sent to the principal’s office. You’d be told something like, “No, Billy, putting ex-lax in the teacher’s coffee maker was NOT a good idea!” After punishment was assigned, he’d end the conversation using his low, scary voice, “This is going on your permanent record.” Well, the permanent record has gone global with social media. I’m continuously amazed at how big it is, but also how small. A few examples.

I once tweeted about wanting the funds for a waterproof laptop because my best ideas come to me in the shower. This lead to Jami Gold telling me about waterproof notepads and then seconds later, the company that made them started following me.

Another time I was convinced my coffee was spiked with Ambien because I was so sleepy. Ambien tips tweeted back for me to take a nap to be on the safe side.

I’ll tweet something I don’t think is that special (Just a cool thing to tweet about.) and then I’m getting responses and retweets up the wazoo. I’m like, “You guys actually read this stuff?”

But it doesn’t stop with Twitter. Before I had a Twitter account, I read and commented on blogs. Future Fandrew and awesome friend, Susan Bischoff was reading the same blogs too. By the time I found her blog, she already knew something about me.

This brings me to my awesome news. Last week, I posted about a comic that blew me away called Undying Love. I tweeted about it and the guys that wrote it noticed. Then they read the post. Then they thanked me. Then they RETWEETED the post!

After that, I was feeling so good, I decided to ask them if they wanted to do an interview. They said YES!

I think we all know what we say on the internet is there forever, but do we realize how vast it is? No matter what you say, someone, somewhere is reading it. And making a decision based on how you’ve presented yourself. What will they think of you?

Info stuff- I’m doing one more ROW80 update for Sunday and then I’m taking a week off the internet so my brains (yes, plural) don’t melt. I’ll be back Monday, April 25th

Cool post!
Funny story: once I posted tweets about my MS (manuscript) and I got several sympathetic tweets from companies who thought I had MS (disease)
Can’t wait for the undying love interview!
Glad your brains are getting a rest, they deserve it.

Yeah, it’s a warning and a tip that so many of us have Google Alerts attached to our names. So if you talk smack about someone in public, they may just get led right to it. And then they may just remember what you say. Fun fact: it’s not always what you say about an author. They’re people. They have friends. If I read where someone has slammed a friend’s book, I think: well, hope you don’t need any favors from me down the road. Not that I keep a notebook…but I think about it!

On the other side, I auto-follow on Twitter but I can’t keep up with all those people. I have a short list of people I interact with, usually because we’ve made some effort or connection at some point. This makes me more likely to notice and RT their interesting stuff. I noticed a new author in my everybody stream promos me a lot. She doesn’t do it with @mentions, but I have a column where I see when people use my name or link to stuff like my books (which is how I found someone selling my book for 4 times what I was selling it for–handy column). But that made me want to add her to the list to follow her more closely, and when she came up with an author-related problem I was able to notice it and contact her by DM with support.

I’m glad you shared this because it reinforces my point and also says something about karma. This author was doing a nice thing for you solely because it was a nice thing to do. No expectation of thanks or recognition. I’ll bet she was very surprised you heard about her problem. So there you have it. Do good things because it’s the right thing to do and you’ll be rewarded when you least expect it.

I also take a mental note of people who deserve help – or not. There is an aspiring author who is quite rude in the way they slam a lot of newbie writers (unfairly to say the least imo) and I (and many others) will never bend over backwards to give them a helping hand. Then are people like Andrew who are pretty generous with their time and attention, and will always have someone to lean on.

In case you haven’t snooped it out yet, in the upper left, click the + for Add Column. A box pops up. In the search type “Claire Farrell” and hit enter. The column pops up. So now while your @mentions come up in the mentions column, you can also see when people are just talking about you, and sometimes when they link to things about you like your blog, your books on Goodreads, etc.

Coincidentally, I was just thinking to write this up for next week, so prepare for a rerun.

Before I created my twitter account people told me that this sort of thing happened, and one day it happened to me.

The problem is that I complained about something, nothing tragic but still… the company reached me, and I can’t help feeling embarrassed. I just didn’t liked it, but it was not my intention to jeopardize anybody.

It only proves to me that what goes around comes around on the internet, for good or for worse. And even though the internet can be a really cozy place; you must be careful.

It’s scary, yet wonderful. I’m not usually one to complain or say bad things about people, so maybe nothing will catch up with me. LOL. Even when I was complaining on my blog about that awful book I was reading, I never mentioned the author or the name of the book out of respect for a fellow author.

Speaking of technology and how you can get in trouble…I was texting something to a friend about another friend, but made a mistake and texted to the one I was talking about. I got a message back saying “who was this intended for?” I was so embarrassed. But luckily, I hadn’t said anything bad. But it just goes to show that the more technology connects us, the more careful we should be.

Same thing happened to me! I got an email where I was being talked about. Nothing really bad, but then I had to respond to it and it actually helped to clear some things up. But you can never tell how that stuff will go. It could’ve gone way worse.

These days I try to ask myself, “Would I care if so and so heard this?” If the answer is yes, I keep it to myself.

LOL! You know the funny thing is that I originally discovered that waterproof notepad product because I tweeted to someone about getting ideas in the shower. That’s it. And then they tweeted to me. I think they must have a search on the word shower – that’s probably an interesting stream. 🙂

I looked through everything in WordPress and couldn’t figure it out, so I contacted them and they told me I needed to enter my blog address in the place for “website.” I guess I never figured that out before because most of the blogs I used to comment on were Blogger. Now most of the people I follow are indies, and they use WordPress.

My characters are guest blogging for me for this A to Z challenge, BTW. Come on over if you want to meet them. Not that the family issues are coming out so much in the blog posts, but it’s a way to get to know them. 🙂